Roller Coaster Ride
by SpaceMonkey0941
Summary: One team. One amusement park. Oh so many pairings. Sparky, Spanky, Snarky, you name it. Borrowed people from BiteMeTechie and Reefgirl. Again. MUCH SHIPPING.


A/N: BiteMeTechie (read: GODDESS OF FANFICTION) has this neat thing called the When Plot Bunnies Attack forum. It's cool. Seriously. Anyway this is from the "100 starting lines" on the forum, Line #123: She screamed in terror.

A/N2: Bwahahahahaha.

A/N3: Also from the GODDESS OF FANFICTION (read: BiteMeTechie) is Lydia Winter. Read "Retribution!" and "Retribution!Revisited". You'll like them. Reefgirl, another Higher Being in this world of us lesser mortals, has kindly contributed her character Alex Ramsey from the 'fic "Cooking With Blue Mary Sue". It is the awesomeness.

A/N4: (Last one, really) Pairings in this are: Spanky, Sparky, Snarky (Rodney McKay and Lydia Winter), also Radek/Alex Ramsey - anyone want to come up with a S----y word for them? I think they deserve it.

--------------------

She screamed in terror, her voice joining hundreds of others as they rushed down the incline. She burrowed her face in his warm fleece jacket and he smiled. Leave it to one of the most fearless leaders he had served under to be afraid of rollercoasters.

He tightened his grip on her reflexivly as they reached the peak of yet another hill and plunged down. Laughing in glee, he thought _hey, it sure beats tryin' to land a faulty Puddlejumper in a hurricaine on a planet in a distant galaxy. Also a bit better than an F-302._

The 'coaster slowed as they neared the end of the ride. Elizabeth sighed in relief as she got out of the car unsteadily.

"I don't know why I let you drag me onto that . . . that thing, John Sheppard," she laughed shakily.

He smiled his trademark rogueish grin at her.

"Hey, it was called the 'Crazy Chipmunk', I mean we just had to try it."

John slung an arm around her shoulders comfortably as they walked along the crowded avenue, laughing and chatting. Suddenly he spotted a cotton candy stand and pulled her over to it. While he dug out his money she mused aloud, "I wonder where the others went . . ."

As he took the pink fluff from the vendor and thanked the man, John turned back to her. He offered the candy to her and while she daintily pulled some off, he answered, "Ronon and Teyla discovered the ferris wheel, so they'll be occupied there for a while, Rodney and Dr. Winter are at the arcade, and Radek said something about a "Spider" and went off with Alex."

She nodded as she licked the sugar off her fingers. "Where do you want to go next?"

John shrugged. "Let's just walk around for a while, hunh?"

Agreeing readily, Elizabeth reached over and snatched the bit of cotton candy that John was about to stick in his mouth. Smiling at him smugly, she made a great show of sticking it into her mouth very slowly.

He made puppy eyes.

She relented. "Oh all right, here." Pulling another bit of fluff off of the cone, she held it out to him. He carefully stuck out his tongue and snagged the pink sugar off of her fingers.

She smirked again. "You missed a spot," she told him as she started to walk away. He grabbed her hand, stopping her. Slowly, looking straight into her eyes, he raised her hand to his mouth and delicately licked her fingers clean. They both stood there for a minute, then Elizabeth, not letting go of his hand, started to pull him after her.

"Come on!" she shouted happily.

He grinned. "What?"

Looking back over her shoulder at him, she smiled. "I think I saw a Tunnel of Love over here somewhere . . ."

--------------------

"Filthy bugger!" Alex screeched as the car made another sickening swoop. She was holding on to the bar in front of her with both hands, eyes wide, and did not look very comfortable.

Next to her in the same car, Radek Zelenka looked exactly the opposite. He was leaning against the side of the car, hands behind his head, looking extremely relaxed and hopeful. He was waiting for the beautiful woman next to him to be slid over in his direction, as the ride was wont to do.

His wish was granted on the next revolution of the gigantic black machine, eight legs rotating around a central circle, each leg with four cars on it, which in turn orbited in their own little circuit. Alex was thrown to Radek's side of the car, and instead of trying to go back to her side, she clung to him until the ride stopped and they got out.

"I . . . will . . . never . . . go on that . . . that bloody _thing_ again!" she stuttered.

Radek patted her on the back comfortingly. "It was not _that_ bad," he said.

She glared fiercely at the mechanical black spider, which was now in motion again, scaring the dickens out of a new batch of park-goers.

Radek smiled. "Come," he said, pulling her gently along with him. She obliged, anything to get away from that terror. As they walked slowly along the middle of the road, enjoying the night air and their company, Alex suddenly stopped.

"What is it?" Radek asked.

She pointed over to a small building, smiling. He followed her finger, then blushed furiously.

"Are you certain?" he said, not wanting to rush her into anything.

"It looks . . . gentler than that awful machine back there," she said teasingly as she pulled him with her into the entrance of the Tunnel of Love.

--------------------

POW.

SPLAT.

KABOOM.

"Watch where you're going, lunkhead!" Lydia Winter screeched as a blue spaceship bumped into her red one on the screen in front of her.

"Well sorree, it's not my fault these things steer like tanks!" Rodney McKay quipped back at her. "Anyway, it's not like you'll catch up to me anyway, I've shot twice as many aliens as you have."

Lydia smirked. "Oh yeah? Well we'll see about that."

Suddenly reaching down behind the machine, she grabbed the plug and yanked it out of the wall. As the screen went blank Rodney's face did too. However, this only lasted a minute, then he went through a series of colors (from green to purple and back again) and started making noises like a kettle boiling over.

"Oh stuff it Rodney, there's an Asteroids game in the corner, let's see who can get to 3,000,000 the fastest." Lydia said, dragging him over to said machine.

They were almost there when a boy of about ten ran in front of them and started banging pointlessly on the machine.

Lydia scowled. Nobody got between her and the classics.

"Hey, shrimp, mind moving over so someone can actually play the game?" she asked the kid semi-politely.

The boy stared insolently up at her and said, "I _AM_ playing. Back off."

Lydia would have tried to leave it at that, but as the boy turned back to the screen, he added a parting insult.

"You're too old to play this, anyway. You're like my gramma's age."

Noticing the tell-tale signs of impending doom (i.e., the smoke rising from Lydia's ears), Rodney grabbed her arm just as she raised it to pound the little snot into the ground.

"Let . . . me . . . go . . . Rodney," she growled from between clenched teeth.

"No," he said. "He's an idiot. He's not worth it. Leave him be."

The boy, who apparently did not have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever, laughed meanly at the pair of scientists, and sealed his fate.

"Oh, like either of you could take me in a fight. You'd probably lose your dentures or something. Go home, isn't it past your bedtimes?"

Rodney sighed.

He let go of Lydia's arm.

"Be my guest," he told her. "It was horrible knowing you," he said to the boy, who stuck out his tongue.

Lydia smiled at Rodney, not a comforting smile, more like the one a shark makes when it sees a baby seal with its tail stuck under a rock. She crouched down to the boy's level.

"How long have you been playing arcade games?" she asked him.

He looke puzzled for a moment, then regained his haughty stature.

"Longer than you," he replied.

"Oh? What's your score on this game?" she replied.

"35,000" he shot back.

She smirked. "Do you ever look at the highscores online?

He snorted, as if anyone who didn't was beneath his esteem. 

"So you must have heard of TheTechster," she continued.

He nodded.

"Well now you've met her," she finished.

He goggled for a minute, then got his composure back and scoffed. "You can't be the Techster, she's like, fifteen or something."

Lydia's smirk widened. "Move over and I'll prove it to you," she said, shoving him ungraciously to the side and slamming a token expertly into the slot.

Five minutes later, when Lydia had successfully broken all previous records for that particular machine, the boy's mouth had opened to the extent it was capable of, and then opened some more. He stood there, staring, as Lydia finished blowing up some more alien spacecraft, then decided to show off a bit.

"Want more proof?" she asked, then without waiting for a reply ran into three asteroids to end the game.

"Watch," she said as she maneuvered the trackpad to type in some letters.

Rodney watched in fascination as she typed in a seemingly meaningless code, twelve digits long, with interspaced letters and numbers, and hit "Enter".

The screen suddenly changed from its background of slow-moving spacejunk to a plain black background with three words on it.

Lydia smiled. She turned to the boy. Bending down to look him in the face, she whispered quietly, "Boo."

The boy ran off like a startled rabbit.

Lydia laughed, a sound Rodney found that he'd heard far too seldom from her.

She turned to him, happiness radiating from her, and he felt compelled to ask, "How did you get it to say, 'Welcome back Techie?"

She shrugged, still grinning like an idiot. "I helped reprogram a bunch of the newer models of the arcade game. That's why I got to spend enough time on it to up my highscore."

Rodney looked at her with new-found respect.

"I may have to marry you," he said reverantly.

"I'd be okay with that," she said, and kept smiling, a fact that reinforced his courage and prompted him to grab her hand impulsively and lead her out of the arcade.

"Where're we going, Rodney?" she said as he pulled her towards a softly-lit entrance to a building.

"Shut up and enjoy it," he snapped lovingly, as they were ushered into a gondola by a man with a mandolin.

--------------------

"This is . . . amazing," Ronon said for the fifth time that minute. Teyla laughed, a soft, melodious sound that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

They were in the ferris wheel, as they had been for hours, sometimes sitting and talking, sometimes sitting and not talking. The entire evening had had a sort of glow over it, partly from the fluorescent lights, but partly from the companionship they were finding in each other.

Stopped at the top, they looked at the lake, spread out to their right for a mile or so. The water appeared black, shot through with the reflections of a thousand lights, and an unearthly moonlight completed the loveliness of the scene.

As the machine ground back into life, Ronon took a chance and put his arm around Teyla's shoulders. He let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding as she relaxed into his touch, leaning her head on his shoulder as they descended back to earth.

Their carriage was the one that stopped at the bottom, and Ronon fished yet another ticket out of his pocket to give to the guy manning the machine. The first few times he had done this, the worker had looked as if he had been about to argue, but after Ronon gave him The Look, he had wisely decided that it wasn't worth it and had taken the ticket without protest.

As they moved slowly upwards again, Teyla laughed quietly.

"What?" Ronon asked, smiling down at her. She looked up at him and smiled.

"I would not have guessed," she said, reaching up to clasp his hand lightly in hers.

"Wouldn't have guessed what?" he said, slightly confused but content to look at her in the moonlight.

She laughed again. "Well, considering that the first time we met, you shot me," she said, then gestured with her free hand.

He smiled. "You wouldn't have guessed that we'd be here a year later?"

She nodded, and he joined her in her laughter.

"I guess I wouldn't have either," he admitted, still smiling.

She sat up, and his body protested the lack of contact.

"You know, Ronon," she started, and he was surprised to see a very cunning look in her eyes.

"I never really paid you back for that," she continued.

"What, all those times you beat the crap out of me in sparring don't count?" he joked.

She shook her head slowly, then slid closer to him, causing the carriage to rock slightly.

Semi-nervous now, he held up his hands placatingly. "I really am sorry about that, you know," he started to say, but was abruptly cut off as she kissed him.

His brain in turmoil, it took him a second to respond, then he turned the rational part of his mind off and let instinct take over. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her closer to him and twined his fingers in her hair. Neither of them noticed the lake anymore, neither of them noticed the fact that again it was their carriage's turn to stop at the bottom, until the operator discreetly cleared his throat.

Without turning away from the kiss or opening his eyes, Ronon reached into his pocket, pulled out the remaining fifty or so tickets, and handed them all to the operator in a long string.

They were not interrupted after that.

--------------------

A/N: -sniffle- Sorry, I had to end on a shippier note, although I really liked writing the Snarky section of this 'fic. I love all the pairings in this, although Alex/Rodney is good too, I like having her try to kill him and then him try to kiss her . . . haha . . . okay. Anyways, Lakeside is, in fact, a real place, it's a small-ish amusement park in western Denver, Colorado, and all the places I mentioned (the Ferris Wheel, the Crazy Chipmunk, the Spider - my personal fave - and the arcade) really do exist, except for the Tunnel of Love. But this 'fic needed it, so I put it in there. Also, the annoying kid in the arcade is my cousin. And I made him politer than he really is. Sad, isn't it?


End file.
